Status anxiety
Could I limit myself to 100 bottles of wine in a year?
Back in January, I wrote about my new year’s resolution to cut down on my drinking. The thought of total…
Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society
In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things,…
At 61, it’s official: I’m ‘young old’
I read with some disappointment recently that the Encyclopaedia Britannica considers 61 – the age I am now – to…
Carry on Kafka: this is our Brave New World
An ex-copper who blogs as Dominic Adler – not his real name – came up with a good phrase this…
Must try harder, Education Secretary
The headmaster of one of the best comprehensives in the country was once asked the following question by Tony Blair:…
Did I deny my son a shot at the Premier League?
When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in…
Will Keir Starmer get me banned from football games?
Last Saturday, I made the 400-mile round trip to Burnley with my 16-year-old son Charlie to see Queens Park Rangers…
A British First Amendment wouldn’t save free speech
Does the United Kingdom need a First Amendment? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, given the…
Starmer’s snowflakes’ charter
I almost choked on my cornflakes when I read that the Prime Minister had said he would slash red tape…
Yvette Cooper wants to lock up your sons
In his independent review of the Prevent programme last year, Sir William Shawcross warned that something had gone very wrong…
Did Michael Gove mean what he said?
I thought the Spectator dinner for Michael Gove hosted by Fraser Nelson would be cancelled. To be clear, this wasn’t…
Why play the Saudi anthem before an all-British boxing match?
For only the second time in my life, I went to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last weekend. At least,…
The science of voting for Kamala Harris
The latest issue of Scientific American, a popular science monthly published by Springer Nature, contains an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris.…
Help! I’ve got class envy
The summer holidays were a washout as far as my children are concerned, because we had to cancel our trip…
Labour’s backwards steps on free speech
Free speech advocates like me need to stop talking about the meagre gains we made under the last government because…
How to exploit a crisis
The phrase ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ is often attributed to Winston Churchill, but it’s something the…
I was wrong about staycations
I hadn’t intended to go on a ‘staycation’ this summer. Quite the contrary, I’d booked a family holiday to Norway.…
Will Starmer make the Online Safety Act even worse?
Good God, there’s a lot of guff being talked about the Online Safety Act. This was a piece of legislation…
Free speech stops riots
With depressing predictability, the riots have led to calls for more censorship. Historically, it was the authoritarian right who blamed…
Welcome to the new global theocracy
I had a revelation while watching the Olympics opening ceremony. It was during the infamous section that I (and almost…
The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of…
Are the Rees-Moggs ready for their new reality?
I felt slightly anxious for Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg when I read he’d agreed to have a reality show made about…
What Labour could learn from Australia and New Zealand
I’m just coming to the end of a four-week speaking tour Down Under and have spotted some worrying signs of…
The funny side of being cancelled
Douglas Is Cancelled, the new drama series on ITV, should come with a trigger warning – for me, anyway. Watching…
The joy of my new allotment
I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email from the Acton Gardening Association last October telling me that a…
